In today’s legal environment, working with electronically stored
information (ESI) presents many challenges beyond the case itself.
Thankfully, developments in technology continuously offer new
opportunities to effectively strategize tactics when managing the
voluminous amount of ESI involved in complex litigation.

As various litigation software technologies evolve, so do their best
uses. In document review, software has evolved to a point where
industry-leading review teams continuously monitor and test changing
tools, with an eye towards achieving the highest efficiency and quality
and lowering overall costs. No longer viewed as a single solution,
choosing the right software product(s) is a major consideration that
forms part of the overall litigation strategy and often happens with
pre-discovery planning.

It is not a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Legal teams need to identify
the necessary technologies that best suit the legal matter at hand. As
a result, when choosing document review platforms, corporate legal
departments, law firms and document review specialists are moving
toward an agnostic approach. Proactive teams frequently test new
versions of review platforms against each other, all in an effort to
measure performance attributes and the overall adaptability to
different types of cases and/or objectives.

The Review Subject: Inference Data
There are three major components to kicking off a smart and successful
document review—people, process and technology. If one leg fails, the
process will be troubled from the start. Keeping current on the
technological developments in document review tools is as important as
using the tools themselves. Through constant evaluation of new tools,
leading document review firms are able to chose the best technology
that blends seamlessly with the attorneys conducting the review and the
process they have established to maximize results.

When evaluating new or updated document review software offerings, the
Tusker Group has established four key performance areas: 1) interface;
2) usability/speed; 3) search/technology; and 4) audit/reporting
features.

A main consideration for the team was the ability to segment data in an
easy and logical manner. The review team performed a thorough
evaluation based on the four key performance areas previously
identified and utilizing 517,000+ records of data provided by Inference.

1) Interface
Overall, Inference’s interface was user-friendly, engaging and
intuitive. The review team found that commands within Inference are
familiar, descriptive and consistent with the overall nomenclature and
patterns of most products. At the time of this evaluation, Inference
did not have full reporting features for auditing purposes. This
created minor difficulties for the review teams as they moved through
different phases of the large database.

2) Usability/Speed:
The large and lucid view of documents, coupled with its interface and
straightforward commands, allowed for easy and quick navigation from
one document to another. For example, after reviewing a document, the
reviewers were able to save and move to the next document with a single
click of the mouse. This simple “save and next” command was very
popular with the team. Additionally, using a single keystroke or mouse
click, the customizable quick key coding made it possible for reviewers
to code documents based on defined fields such as “high priority” or
“non-responsive,” and instantly add multiple-field coding within
seconds. Importantly, the reviewers noted that because of the
combination of an intuitive interface and well-structured options, they
were able to reduce the need to repeatedly return to previous screens.

Inference’s architecture proved to save significant time when
performing both Boolean keyword and concept searches. Built on the
Autonomy IDOL engine, Inference employs a completely scalable
distributed architecture. Through its query parser technology, multiple
queries can be executed within the tool, searching across the entire
dataset without degradation in speed or responsiveness. For example, a
group of reviewers focused on keyword searching were able to execute
searches with results returned without hindering those groups executing
complex queries or performing clustering. Moreover, Inference’s
architecture not only maintains system responsiveness in querying-
Inference’s complete review toolkit, including redaction and
production, is maintained regardless of other operations being
performed within the application.

3) Search/Technology:
This is where the team felt the tool truly performed. One of the
leading strengths of the tool is its clustering capabilities. The
reviewers were impressed by Inference’s ability to identify concepts
from across the entire dataset which enabled reviewers to separate
irrelevant or non-responsive documents from responsive documents.

Inference’s intuitive concept searching and advanced clustering made
segmenting and prioritizing documents a relatively quick and manageable
task, which may be useful for large corporate suits and regulatory
matters where the vast amounts of data and deadline pressures can be
crippling.

Inference notes that it can take data from any source and add new data
sets without having to reprocess the entire database. The tool’s
ability to view attachments while looking at the parent document also
streamlined the review. A useful feature for first-level review, the
results of search term queries are shown within the entire sentence to
provide context.

4) Administration/Audit and Report
At the time of the review, Inference’s support team had limited
availability. The company’s support hours were based on traditional EST
business hours. After our review, we learned that Inference had
expanded its customer hours, but the new hours still raise potential
support issues for offshore teams.

Inference’s overall workflow management allows greater folder creation
and assignment capabilities. However, the tool also had limited
reporting capabilities—this underdeveloped feature impacted the ability
to fine-tune the team’s process through the review and to develop a
results-driven matrix. Like the expanded support hours, Inference has
responded and is designing an extranet portal that will provide a
separate interface containing new report generation features and
functions to be introduced in newer versions.

Closing Evaluation
As all of us in the legal community can attest to, ESI continues to be
a growing and moving target. The number of available electronic
discovery software solutions also continues to increase, which adds to
the growing complexity. In many cases, investing in an e-discovery
software solution is an expensive undertaking that will impact the
people conducting the review and its overall process.

Overall, the Tusker Group review team was impressed by Inference’s
interface, usability and the analytics that power the platform’s
clustering capabilities. Web-based and hosted, the data-clustering
capabilities and workflow features were geared toward large-scale
matters with voluminous amounts of data. Many of Inference’s
enhancements allowed for a streamlined deployment of first-level
documents for a robust and accelerated review.

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Dario Olivas is actively involved in overseeing Tusker Group’s advanced
document review operations and a frequent speaker on offshore document
review. His legal experience has centered on international corporate
and transactional disputes; both as an attorney working in
international jurisdictions and as a two-time Fulbright Scholar
recipient focused on international business, legal and social issues.